PAS to seek court order to postpone polls

"This afternoon we will meet the Election Commission to demand a clean-up of the electoral roll,"

"If the EC does not do so we will not hesitate to take legal action, we will get our legal team to seek a court injunction to postpone polling,"

PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub


UPDATED

By Adib Zalkapli
PORT DICKSON, Oct 7 — Alleging that hundreds of postal voters are also ordinary registered voters, PAS today said it will seek a court order to postpone polling for the Bagan Pinang by-election scheduled for this Sunday.

Speaking to reporters at the media briefing today, PAS vice-president Salahuddin Ayub said the party will first meet the Election Commission (EC) this afternoon.

"This afternoon we will meet the Election Commission to demand a clean-up of the electoral roll," he said.

"If the EC does not do so we will not hesitate to take legal action, we will get our legal team to seek a court injunction to postpone polling," he added.

Salahuddin (picture) said the party has discovered the existence of what he described as dubious voters in the electoral roll for quite some time.

"We have brought up this matter for years, since the formation of Bersih, and in various meetings with EC, but no action has been taken," he said when asked why PAS was only taking action now.

Another PAS vice-president, Datuk Mahfuz Omar, cited a Bernama report quoting the president of the ex-servicemen’s association, Datuk Muhammad Abdul Ghani, who urged retired soldiers who have yet to change their status to ordinary voters to return to Bagan Pinang if they are still registered as postal voters in the constituency.

"So the issue here is, are the retired soldiers going to come back to vote or somebody else will vote for them?" asked Mahfuz.

PAS had previously claimed that 70 per cent of the postal voters in Bagan Pinang are retired servicemen.

Some 4,600 of the more than the 13,000 voters in the Bagan Pinang state constituency are members of the security forces.

The postal voters, traditionally a safe vote bank for Barisan Nasional (BN), will vote tomorrow while ordinary voters will go to the polls on Sunday.